Friday, December 16, 2005

Christmassy banana cake

This is a lovely banana cake that would suit perfectly any cake table during the coming holidays. The cake is moist and tasty, and the use of cinnamon, cloves and ginger automatically give it a very Christmassy flavour. The recipe is from the Finnish Valio site and I made it twice in a row in late November. It is a rather large cake that should yield about 20 servings. Here's the original recipe:

Whisk eggs with sugar, add melted butter.Mix the dry ingredients.Puree bananas, mix with the yogurt.Add the dry mix and banana mix to the egg and sugar mixture.Pour the batter into a buttered round bundt tin and bake in the middle of the 175˚C oven for 60 minutes.Cover with a chocolate glaze and chopped roasted hazelnuts.

This is exactly what I did in the first time, as can be seen on the banner (I baked it in a small rectangular cake tin).

However, on the following day (I was asked to bring a cake along to a dinner party with some university friends) I tweaked the recipe a little and I liked the new version much more. I chopped the banana instead of pureeing it, and added it to the cake mixture at the end, together with some chopped dark chocolate.

This was much nicer - I liked the small banana and chocolate spots in the final product. And this was served with a warm chocolate sauce á la Nigel Slater (Toblerone, cream and butter, although I replaced Toblerone with Tesco Finest Swiss milk chocolate with caramel pieces, as I could not find Toblerone anywhere in Edinburgh that night). Serving the cake with a hot chocolate sauce made it much more pudding like, so it was a lovely ending to a very nice meal cooked by my friends.

I will surely be making this for the Christmas table back home as well.

5 comments:

Hi Pille! I stumbled on ur blog from OsloFoodie's, and oh wow! I just love reading about the recipes, you have sooo many wonderful recipes here! This banana cake really look yummy and I will definitely try it when I go back home for the holidays.

Paz - it was a lovely banana cake, especially with all the Christmassy spices!

Kat & Satoshi - thanks!

Annamox - welcome! I'm glad you found your way here, and that you like reading the recipes:)

Nicky - this was my first banana cake, and I'm encouraged to try many other versions now. Nigella has a lovely sounding banana cake recipe that I could try. Or maybe you'll share your favourite one? :)